“Tea party” with Ivo Goldstein: Yugoslavia – “Ideal state framework”, “artificial creation” or “prison of nations”?

The goal of Ivo Goldstein’s lecture are not to provide firm and final answers, but to indicate methodological procedures on how to approach questions and seek answers to them.

First of all, Goldstein intends to contrast scrupulous historical research with political manipulation that often drives the pulic attention to wrong topics, such as the questions whether Yugoslavia was “beneficial” or “harmful” for a nation. The terms “usefulness” or “harmfulness”, however, belong to the categorical apparatus of politics, and not that of historical science.

Also, the lecture will provide an overview of the state of historiography in the former Yugoslav countries, which is largely still sterile, cocooned in old problems and often preoccupied with cheap political goals. For the most part, this is the result of public policies in all those countries, which continue to consider historical science and history as a desirable field for political manipulation. This is partly due to the historians themselves, who most often stay in their comfort zone or swim with the tide because this is politically, socially and financially more profitable, than posing inconvenient questions.

In the end, Goldstein will offer his answer to the starting question, whether Yugoslavia was an ideal state framework, an artificial creation or a prison of nations.

Ivo Goldstein (1958), historian and diplomat, worked as a full professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Zagreb. He was from 2013 to 2017 ambassador of Croatia to France, Monaco and permanent representative to UNESCO. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2022, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, awarded him the Order of Knight of the Legion of Honor of the French Republic.

He published about thirty books, including Byzantium on the Adriatic VI-IX century (1992), Croatian early Middle ages (1995), Croatian history (2003, four Croatian, three English and Slovenian editions), Jews in Zagreb 1918–1941 (2004). With Slavko Goldštajn, he published the books Holocaust in Croatia (2016), Tito (2015) and others.

The lecture is part of the Regional Tea party titled “Yugoslavia” which is organized together with the Academic Network for Cooperation in Southeast Europe. It takes place in the Main hall of the Institute of social sciences, can be followed also online and will be moderated by Irena Ristić (IDN).

https://zoom.us/j/96737868270?pwd=gSxwSXDDD9UvaAXhTLyWCCsz8Kg2sz.1

Meeting ID: 967 3786 8270
Passcode: 087673